Assessment Notes

Justification

Antrodia alpina is a wood-inhabiting rare saprotropic fungus growing on coarse dead conifer wood, mainly larch, known in Europe only from the montane and subalpine zone of the Alps. It has conspicuous, large and brightly yellow fruitbodies. In total, it has only been recorded about 50 times, of which less than 10 are from the last decade. We assume the total number of localities to be fewer than 250 and Antrodia alpina conservatively on average to be present in three places per locality. Hence the total population size is estimated to be 1500 mature individuals. The subpopulations are very small and will certainly not exceed 250 nature individuals. The population is expected to be declining due to ongoing habitat decrease. The species is therefore assessed as Endangered.

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Taxonomic notes

NCBI-Genbank (accessed 12 March 2019) display 7 sequences of so-called Antrodia alpina, 5 from USA and 2 without geographic source from a Taiwanese research group. The cited publication for the US-collections (Ortiz-Santana et al. 2013), however, does not contain Antrodia alpina. No European specimen of this species nor the type collection has yet been sequenced. In this assessment, the records from USA and Tawain are not considered to be conspecific with the European taxon.

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Geographic range

Antrodia alpina is recorded exclusively from France, Switzerland, Austria, Italy and Germany in the montane and subalpine zone of the Alps (Bernicchia 2005, Ryvarden and Melo 2014). The Alps form a mountainous range of  96,000 km². Only 20% of this area is located in the altitudinal and climatic zone suitable for this species.

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Population and Trends

A total of 52 records are known according to the databases for fungi in France, Switzerland, Austria and Italy and from GBIF. However only few records are within the last 10 years (5 in Switzerland, 1 in Austria, none in Italy and Germany). It is nationally classified as Vulnerable (VU) in Austria, as extremely rare (R) in Germany but has apparently not been assessed in France, Switzerland and Italy. The species has not been much searched for and the number of additional localities is unknown. However, it has conspicuous, large and brightly yellow fruitbodies. We assume the total number of localities to be fewer than 250 and Antrodia alpina conservatively on average to present in three places per locality. Hence the total population size is estimated to be 1500 mature individuals (Dahlberg and Mueller 2011). The subpopulations are very small and will certainly not exceed 250 nature individuals. The species is suspected to decline due to ongoing habitat decrease.

Population Trend: Decreasing

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Habitat and Ecology

Antrodia alpina is a wood-inhabiting saprotropic fungus causing brown rot, with annual thick lemon yellow sporocarps at the base of very old large living trunks, dead snags and stumps. The species grows only on conifers, mainly Larix decidua, more rarely on Pinus spp., Picea abies and Abies alba in the upper montane and subalpine zone of the Alps.

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Threats

Coniferous old growth forest with appropriate habitat quality with large trees and a high amount of coarse dead wood have become rare in the Alps. Serious threats are logging, stochastic winter windstorms causing windthrown trees followed by beetle infections, and clearance for touristic and traffic infrastructure. Increasing extraction of wood for biofuel production may also pose a threat. Climate warming might negatively affect the habitat size and quality, hence the size of the Antrodia alpina population in the future (Bebi et al. 2017).

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Conservation Actions

Protection of known sites, and maintenance of large old suitable host tree and dead wood, are necessary actions for the conservation of this species.

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Use and Trade

The species is not known to be used.

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Source and Citation

Senn-Irlet, B. 2019. Antrodia alpina. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2019: e.T148080667A148080680. Accessed on 22 November 2025.

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• Country occurrence